HI!
You might remember that there was a fairly stupid review of Brixton Village's Honest Burgers in this space. Well, thanks to the volume of snarky comments/e-mails/Twitter DMs I received, it was taken down - I've kinda got better things to do than to reply to people who, amongst other things, called me "smarmy & condescending" and "seriously uncool" - I'm not uncool, just ask my mum.
I decided to go back. One of the complaints levelled at the previous review was that I had 'ambushed' Honest Burgers on their third day of trading so I thought heading back when they've had a good month
at least to bed in and hone their craft seemed fair. So the return leg started well, the staff are still very nice and they've done some seriously fine work with the limited space afforded to them. I had previously moaned about the lack of pickles on my hamburger, so the Honest Burger - a mature cheddar (I know, I know) and smoked bacon topped creation - which prominently states the inclusion of pickles was swiftly ordered. It arrived. Why do I have a knife? I don't know. The damned thing is in a bowl and even if I wanted to cut it in half it would be pretty tough considering this is a fucking butter knife. Anyways, the first sign of pressure on the bun and it began to collapse.
To aid the bun's destruction from above, it was helped by the liberal addition of red onion relish decaying the underside, a condiment that's still as unnecessary as it was on my last visit. As I delved in further, my prized pickle turned out to be a clumsily cut chunk of cornichon - a
Byron-esque mess of preserved vegetable. It's not Honest Burgers fault that I don't like cheddar on top of my hamburger, I probably shouldn't have ordered it - instead of a molten veil (a la processed American cheese-food) there was the usual hardened mass of dairy. The bacon, lacking any of its advertised smoke, was neither hear nor there - cooked to that murky no man's land between crisp and flabby. I wasn't asked how I'd like my 4/5oz (at a guess) of Ginger Pig beef cooked, it turned up north of medium, lacking any deep bovine flavour and utterly lost in the giant, disintegrating bun around it. Getting to the end was frankly, pretty difficult.
As you might be able to gauge from this, and if you were lucky enough to read it (LOLZ), my last review - I just can't bring myself to enjoy the hamburger from Honest Burgers. What I will say is that at £8 including chips it certainly is not bad value, also they have those vaguely ration-era enamel bowls that I like.
Crockery bonus. But it's a wholly disjointed experience where no one element is better than mediocre. I'm still going to visit the Village for the other excellent ventures - lovely ultra-local and seasonal fare from the
Cornercopia, coffee from the Antipodean folk at
Federation Coffee and the finest (read: only) salted caramel gelato I've ever had from
Lab G. I really want to like Honest Burgers - why shouldn't I want to like a local business serving my favourite foodstuff? But unfortunately my dreams of a conveniently delicious meal on my doorstep have fallen apart, like so many poorly constructed hamburgers, around me.
